I will be starting up my lab in the [http://bioe.rice.edu/ Department of Bioengineering] at [http://www.rice.edu/ Rice University] in the Fall of 2010. I am looking to bring on creative, motivated postdocs with experience in molecular biology, evolutionary biology, microbiology, developmental biology, biophysics and chemical engineering. Research will focus on engineering synthetic sensing, signal transduction, metabolisms and cell-cell interactions. If you are interested in joining the lab, please contact me at jeff.tabor at gmail dot com.

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== Background ==

== Background ==

*I am currently a Postdoctoral Fellow in the [http://www.voigtlab.ucsf.edu/ Voigt lab] at [http://www.ucsf.edu/ UCSF].

*I am currently a Postdoctoral Fellow in the [http://www.voigtlab.ucsf.edu/ Voigt lab] at [http://www.ucsf.edu/ UCSF].

Revision as of 02:59, 29 May 2010

Contents

Rice

I will be starting up my lab in the Department of Bioengineering at Rice University in the Fall of 2010. I am looking to bring on creative, motivated postdocs with experience in molecular biology, evolutionary biology, microbiology, developmental biology, biophysics and chemical engineering. Research will focus on engineering synthetic sensing, signal transduction, metabolisms and cell-cell interactions. If you are interested in joining the lab, please contact me at jeff.tabor at gmail dot com.

Research

Synthetic Biology

Bacterial Photography

I was involved with a group that designed a "bacterial photography" system in which a community of E.coli act as a biological film capable of genetically "printing" an image of light. This was accomplished by rewiring an osmo-responsive signal transduction system in E.coli to respond to red light. The light sensor was then used to control the expression of black pigment, such that dark areas of a projected image result in dark areas on the bacterial plate and light areas result in light areas. Over the entire population, the image is printed at a theoretical resolution of over 100 Megapixels per square inch. This is due to relatively small size of bacteria (1x3 microns).

Bacterial Edge Detector

We recently reprogrammed the photographic bacteria to identify the edges of objects within the projected image. In the bacterial edge detector, each cell determines whether it is located in the light, the dark, or at the boundary of light and dark. Only those who are at a boundary produce the black pigment. The emergent result over the entire population is the outline of the projected image. Edge detection is a well studied serial algorithm where computation time increases linearly with the number of pixels (approximately as the square of image size). Because the bacterial edge detector is a parallel computer, the algorithm runs in constant time regardless of image size. This bottom-up approach highlights the parallel information processing abilities inherent to biological systems, a feature which is taken advantage of in natural systems such as metazoan development and neural networks.

Color control of gene expression

We have recently expanded light regulation in E.coli to independently control the expression of different genes with different colors of light (more to come).